Bill Clinton covers state in whirlwind day

Former President Bill Clinton said Sunday that Sen. Hillary Clinton refuses to be counted out in Oregon -- or in the larger battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton said at five stops across Oregon that Sen. Clinton isn't ready to concede anything. Although "Hillary's been behind in the polls here from Day 1," he emphasized that she leads in polls in the upcoming primaries in West Virginia (Tuesday) and Kentucky (May 20).

He said his wife insists on voters being able to make their choice, and he pressed her Oregon supporters to keep urging other voters to back her.

"We're going to be united at the end," he said of Democrats, but "it's important to let the process play out."

Clinton said Oregonians would favor his wife over Sen. Barack Obama if they knew more about her positions on issues such as health care, trade and energy.

"That's why I'm giving you the ammo here," Clinton told a gathering of about 125 union members at the IBEW hall in Portland. The audience was made up mostly of unions that have endorsed Sen. Clinton, such as the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County &
Municipal Employees.

Afterward, he spoke to a larger crowd at Gresham High School, estimated at 600 people by the Clinton campaign.

Things got temporarily testy at the Gresham stop, when Bill Dodds, who says he supports Obama, kept interrupting Clinton with questions about the North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton eventually got Dodds to quiet down and when police moved in to escort Dodds out, the former president said to let him stay.

It was part of a busy two-day schedule for Clinton. In addition to his appearances Sunday in Pendleton, Baker City, Redmond, Portland and Gresham, he's scheduled for another five campaign stops along the Oregon Coast and Willamette Valley today.

Earlier in Baker City, an animated Clinton confided one of his "Laws of Politics" to an enthusiastic eastern Oregon crowd of about 1,000: "If someone tells you you can't win, it's because they think you can and they are afraid you will."

People from at least two eastern Oregon counties interrupted Mother's Day festivities and ignored cool temperatures to come to Baker City, population less than 10,000, to hear the former president on the stone steps of the Baker County Courthouse. Among them was La Grande attorney David Baum, 58, who drove his 88-year-old mother, Jeanette, about 80 miles round trip from La Grande.

"It's a Mother's Day present," Baum said. "How many times do you have a chance to see a real, live president and hear him speak?"

Presidential-class politicians seldom find their way to the isolated, eastern Oregon mountain region. Photographs are still displayed here of Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy walking his dog, Freckles, at the Baker County Airport during a stop 40 years ago this week, not long before his assassination.

President Warren G. Harding probably passed through Baker City in July 1923 after an Oregon Trail commemorative visit to tiny Meacham, between La Grande and Pendleton. That visit came as Harding's administration was crumbling under the Teapot Dome scandal, and Harding fell ill and died less than a month later.

This is a conservative corner of Oregon, and one law enforcement official providing security for Clinton's visit estimated 80 percent of the crowd was Republican. But party affiliation seemed to matter little.

Kyle Corbin, who was elected mayor of nearby Union two years ago at age 18, summed things up for many who came:

"You gotta see a president when you can see a president," he said.

Small-town appearances in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have amply underscored that where Bill Clinton speaks, Hillary Clinton wins primary elections, a Clinton aide said. And the former president demonstrated he still possesses his old magic with audiences. In a speech that lasted more than an hour, he had the crowd alternately cheering, laughing, whooping and shouting.

Most of the speech was an outline of Hillary Clinton's plans to end the war in Iraq, bring home the troops, rebuild the military, restore manufacturing jobs to the United States, jumpstart medical and technical research and unravel the knots in the economy, education, health care and energy.

"She's good at this," Clinton said of his wife's instincts for problem solving and governing. "You ought to make her the commander in chief."

He also spoke at length about emerging green technology that would enable an SUV to get more than 100 miles a gallon in town and 70 miles a gallon on the highway. Such technology utilizes advanced lithium battery packs to create a "hybrid car on steroids," he said. But it will require tax incentives and the right sort of chief executive to make sure such vehicles become available, he said.

"It's not about her or her opponent, it's about you," he told the audience, many of whom brought vote-by-mail ballots to complete at the rally.

When it was over, ex-Baker City Mayor Karen Yeakley, 58, said, "He was right on. I hadn't voted yet, and I think I've made up my mind."